The Day of the Forty-Four Sunsets
by mon-petit-pois
Summary: "They have hurt each other so many times." Tony and Ziva and the consequences. Set summer 2009.


He goes straight home from Abby's lab that day.

The heavy words fall from Gibbs' lips, echo in the dreaded silence, and suddenly Tony's heart is beating a mile a minute and he can't hear anything over the roar in his head. The excited and motivated atmosphere becomes a thing of the past, replaced by silence so profound he was sure they could hear his very world shattering.

He does not even bother making an excuse before he walks out, forgoing elevator for the stairwell. The sound of his footfalls ricochets off the walls and mixes with the words _there were no survivors_ still ringing through every inch of him.

Pushing through the door to the first-floor lobby, he walks empty-handed to the parking lot, knowing that returning to the bullpen to retrieve his things would inevitably lead him to seeing her empty desk, which now has an entirely different meaning than it had before.

He drives like she would have on the way home, and somewhere in his head her ghost taunts, _you never were any better than I was._

She is not talking about his driving, and it stings more than he cares to admit.

He drinks himself blind that night and ends up spending the better portion of it hugging a toilet seat, wondering how much more he would have to drink before he could no longer feel the ice cold barrel of her gun bruising his chest.

…

There is a gun pressed to her kneecap and a voice somewhere is yelling, but her ears are clogged with thick congealed blood and she does not hear.

Does not want to hear.

Her arms are bound with zipties to a red-stained wooden chair. There is a shove and a crash and suddenly she is on her side, curling her legs to her chest in a futile attempt to shield her vital organs from the heavy blows delivered with boots and knives and clubs that pummel her to a pulp.

They injure, spit, and leave.

…

He calls in sick the next day, knowing but not particularly caring that it would fool no one. He cannot face her desk today, can't stomach the emptiness and the stacks of personnel files that he has no intention of ever opening.

Tim shows up that night, takes his guns, and leaves.

Tony does not know whether to be annoyed or proud.

He does not drink that night, and without the alcohol to numb the pain the tears well up in his eyes.

_I thought DiNozzo's do not cry?_ Her voice-in-his-head is mocking and when he blinks he sees her disapproving face floating behind his lids.

They have hurt each other so many times. _Had_ hurt each other.

But she's been dead for two months, and it all seems different now.

…

The torture stops and the night visits start, and it should not be this of all things that breaks her.

But it is, and when they leave she sobs brokenly and dryly and prays fervently to a God she does not even believe in anymore that she does not live to see the sunrise.

There is no one to blame but herself.

…

They catch a case that week. Tony walks onto the crime scene, takes one look at the bloated Petty Officer floating dead in the lake, and runs off.

He vomits behind a tree and spends the rest of the day warding off images of her struggling, gasping for air, before becoming still and blue and food for the fish.

He forgives her for everything, then, and wonders if in her last moments she did the same for him.

…

She spends every second trying _not _to think of him, so it is only fitting that when the hallucinations start they come in the form of a mossy-eyed man with blood on his hands. He paces in the corner, ghostly and smoky and managing to not disturb the dust particles that floated through the stale air.

_This is your fault,_ he promises, before pulling a gun from his holster, aiming it between her eyes, and firing.

She cannot hate him, even then; the words echo in the silence and she agrees.

…

He is staring at her desk one day, imagining, when Gibbs' familiar orders punch through and he cracks.

"No."

And that is that, because they can take his guns snoop through his medicine cabinet but they cannot stop him from avenging the death of the only person he has ever loved.

He makes his case and before they leave he tidies up his apartment. He calls his lawyer, an obvious but necessary breach of Rule 13, and ensures that his estate is in order.

The plane takes off and he feels oddly relieved.

…

There is excitement within the men in the camp, and she knows it is only a matter of time. They will move camp, and to bring prisoners along, especially one whose sole purpose is more pleasure than business, is impractical.

They have kept her around for far too long, and she rejoices when they enter the room and place a burlap sack over her head.

Her last glimpse of the world is of a blood-spattered cement wall.

They force her out of the room and she stumbles, her bruised and weakened legs fighting to keep herself from being dragged. She would go to her death proudly, on her own two feet, until they shoved her to her knees and put a long-awaited bullet through her head.

She recalls standing over a cooler in a trunk, remembers her vow, and prays silently that when she is killed her body is tossed away and forgotten, not carved up and sent to torture those she loved.

_Loves,_ she corrects, and mourns that they will never know.

But then there is another chair, words her defeated brain cannot comprehend, and Tony.

Mossy eyes stare back into hers and they smile.

…

They do not say a word on the airplane. The weight of all they need to say is unbearable, the burden of Atlas, but neither of them can bring their mouths to open.

Instead, when the plane taxis down the runway and lurches into the sky, he pulls her frail, trembling body into his and promises with soothing hands that _it will all be okay._

For a moment it does not matter who betrayed who, just that they are both alive and breathing as one.

…

They find themselves in the men's room, as they always do when there are heavy conversations to be had.

Apologies form in the air from both sides, playing a blame game that is fundamentally different than most of the past. Self-flagellation is the order of the day, or better, the summer, but in the end they reconcile and her warm, cracked lips find their way to his warm, stubbly cheek.

And it feels resolved, but it's not.

…

One day she shows up at his door, and he knows she is finally ready to ask the question.

"What did you mean?"

He invites her in, makes her tea, and they sit down on the same couch where he drank himself sick the night he heard of her death.

"Are you going to make me ask again?"

He shrugs and sips. "What exactly do you want to know?"

"You did not intend to get out of Somalia alive."

"That doesn't sound like a question."

Her coffee eyes bore deep into his and she swallows loudly, mouth opening and hesitating slightly. "I just... I want to know why."

"Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to, remember?"

"I want..." she trails off, and corrects, "I _need_ to know."

"Well in that case it's simple. It sucked thinking you were on some mission somewhere, hating my guts, but that was... nothing... compared to how it felt to find out you were dead, had _been _dead for months, and that the last memory I would ever have of you was of a gun shoved in my chest."

The look that crosses her face is so pained, so guilty, that he has to fight not to take the words back as soon as they escape. Her eyes glint in the moonlight with unshed tears.

He is not finished.

"Figured I'd do one thing right by you, even if it was too late and even if it would be the last th..." There is a sudden lump in his throat and he halts, remembering how easy it had been to walk away from all this and towards almost certain death in Somalia.

He wonders if their missions in Somalia were that different, after all.

"I never could have hated you." Her voice is thick but firm. "My greatest regret, when I thought it was all over, was that I never did tell you that."

He takes her hand, rubbing it gently and studying the red bracelets of scar tissue where three months of bondage had left its mark. "It never should have happened like this." He closes his eyes against the world. "You deserve more than this."

She shakes her head emphatically. "_You_ deserve more, more than a partner that would tackle you when you were injured, press a gun to your chest, your leg... And leave. I... I hate myself for that everyday, Tony."

"I tried to hate you for it," he admits, wrapping his fingers around her scarred wrist and looking up to meet her watery eyes. "But I couldn't. I just wanted you back."  
_  
__I wanted you home._

"I am home, now."

And oh, sweeter words have never been spoken.

* * *

_A/N: You guys can thank the fabulous Hannah (mszivadavid) for this one! The prompt was from the tumblr blog writeworld, and it was "sometimes I try to make myself hate you, but I can never quite manage it."_

_Please drop a review and let me know what you think!_


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